Category Archives: Gadgets and Gizmos

The tiny, flat Glowstone Flashlight has quite a few tricks up its sleeve(Credit: Glowstone)

When it comes to electric gadgets, a flashlight is just about as basic as you can get. But Glowstone has attempted to create a flashlight that’s anything but basic, with its high-powered versatility making it handy for all sorts of applications, from camping, to the garage, to pulling double duty as a bicycle light. read more

Hankook’s two concept tires, the Hexonic and the Aeroflow, at the Essen motor show(Credit:Hankook)

We’re suckers for good concept tires here at New Atlas, and it seems there’s no shortage of ideas each year for what the future might look like where the rubber hits the road. These two Hankook concepts come to us from the Essen Motor Show, and they concentrate on autonomous comfort and racing downforce. read more

from the Daily Mail:

A Chinese rover is making its tracks on the soft surface of the ‘dark’ side of the moon after touching down on our nearest celestial neighbour.

The Yutu-2 – or Jade Rabbit 2 – rover drove off its lander’s ramp and onto the exterior of the moon’s far side at 10:22pm Beijing time (2:22 pm GMT) on Thursday, about 12 hours after the Chinese spacecraft carrying it came to rest.

The proposed jetpack race series will be open to all turbine VTOL personal flight machines that can prove their safety(Credit: Jetpack Aviation)

The team at Jetpack Aviation (JPA) has just completed test flights in which two pilots flew close enough together to playfully boop each other on the nose. Next step: the world’s first jetpack race series, starting in 2019, and yes, the jetboards and jet suits of the world are invited to participate! read more

The robot hand can play simple musical phrases by rocking and rolling the wrist(Credit: Josie Hughes/University of Camridge)

Mimicking the complex movement of a human hand is not an easy task for roboticists. As well as multiple bones and joints, there are tendons, ligaments, muscles, nerves and more to try and match. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have looked at simplifying the design and cutting back on the programming required to control a robotic hand, and developed a piano-playing soft skeleton bot that rocks the keyboard. read more

Automotive technology continues advancing forward at blinding speed. Electric vehicles are inching toward their big tipping point; self-driving technologies are growing and improving; and even the good, old internal combustion engine is learning new tricks. Pretty soon we’ll all be zipping around in the swarm of self-driving, self-charging electric taxi pods. Before we do, we’ll continue getting a taste of that future through the high-powered lens of concept cars. This year’s most memorable concepts included retro-styled electrics, next-gen hypercars and one very uncommon type of off-road hybrid. read more

The mixed reality specs scene is certainly getting interesting. Magic Leap released its developer edition glasses earlier this year, there are strong rumors that Apple is planning a launch in the next couple of years, and now we have the nReal Light glasses to look forward to in 2019. read more

Alieno Arcanum: the biggest and mostest of everything imaginable(Credit: Alieno)

Ever since electric cars came back onto the menu in the Lithium age, something like this has been coming. Something flatly outrageous, something that smashes the paradigm of the hypercar and lays waste to all before it. Meet the 5,221-horsepower, 303-mph, all-electric Alieno Arcanum.

Born of a Bulgarian company nobody’s ever heard of before, the Arcanum lays down the longest, brashest and most ridiculous set of promises I have ever seen in a press release. And boy, have I seen some press releases, folks. read more

There’s a lot of high-tech gear you could haul into the outdoors these days, but there’s also plenty to be said for solutions that take a simpler approach. The Singapore-based designers behind the Ember Stove aren’t ones to complicate things, taking to Kickstarter with a compact two-piece cooking solution designed to fit in your pocket and fire up with just a handful of twigs. read more